TY - JOUR AB - <p>The Amsterdam Schouwburg festively opened in January 1638 with the performance of<br>Vondel’s Gijsbreght van Aemstel. The play was situated in medieval Amsterdam, but<br>addressed nonetheless the seventeenth-century audience explicitly. In Gijsbreght van<br>Aemstel political and moral instructions that related to the Amsterdam of Vondel’s age<br>were given. To approach these political and moral instructions, I will make use of Michel<br>Foucault’s notion of ‘governmentality’. Foucault’s theoretical concept deals with the<br>construction of power structures. Governmentality allows me to place Vondel’s text in a<br>contemporary debate about how the state should be ordered, and in this way opens up an<br>interpretation of the instructions of the play accordingly. I will argue that the play condemned violent<br>struggles, and that the text presented an opposing stand on how the state<br>should be ordered.<br>To indicate how the play voiced an opinion about contemporary political debates, I<br>will confront Gijsbreght van Aemstel with Hugo de Groots De Republica Enendanda.<br>This early tract, by one of the most important scholars of the Dutch Republic, also played<br>a part in Vondel’s play. This way Vondel's text can be read as an exploration of political<br>ideas in a literary practice, in which the character of Gijsbreght van Aemstel is presented<br>as an ideal.</p> AU - Mike Keirsbilck DA - 2012/2// DO - 10.21825/kzm.v66i0.17616 IS - 0 VL - 66 PB - Koninklijke Zuid-Nederlandse Maatschappij voor Taal- en Letterkunde en Geschiedenis PY - 2012 TI - Verleden en macht in Vondels Gijsbreght van Aemstel: een politieke theorie in een literaire vorm T2 - Handelingen - Koninklijke Zuid-Nederlandse maatschappij voor taal- en letterkunde en geschiedenis UR - https://openjournals.ugent.be/kzm/article/id/71988/ ER -